Turns out, Arthur was right. Slaying a monster that high level, single-
handedly? Yeah, that was the stuff of epic songs, and before we’d left
Massilix, there had been a dozen different songs being sung about him. In
the end, there was one really good song that had made it out of Massilix,
but it gave him an ear-splitting grin every time we came into a town, and he
heard his name being sung ahead of time. No need to hire a bard to write his
song, it was already being sung!
On the other hand, my experience was a bit less pleasant. Glacia was a bard
at the end of the day, and left Perinthus with a mild grudge against me, for
‘betraying’ her secret, and being part of the group that had come down on
her, and all but accused her of mass murder. There was an epic song about
Perinthus and the plague, and Hesoid being slain. It was less popular than
Arthur slaying the monster by a margin, but it was making its rounds, a
song we’d hear once in town to Arthur’s dozen.
My name wasn’t mentioned once. Ponticus, the practically useless Light
healer, had the fewest mentions, at eight. Hence my foul mood, and general
grumpiness towards bards.
We settled in towards a fairly standard entrance, and started to move
towards town to set up at the guard’s barracks, as usual.
Losing Origen hurt. I hadn’t realized just how many little inscriptions and
enchantments were in the Argo, making life easy for us, keeping things
simple. From minor things like better food preservation, extending how
long food was good for by a day or so – minor, but noticeable, done without
making things cold, without a fridge like I’d suggested all that time ago
when I was first joining up – to making the walls slightly more dust and
dirt-repellant, to the more major ones like the horses being able to see in the
dark, all of our chore workload had increased with him gone, and his
inscriptions slowly wearing out.
Our armor inscriptions were still good, but only due to how rarely we
needed to use them. However, we no longer sparred with them, instead
saving them for the fights where we needed them. The support, like a good
janitor, like a good IT professional, nobody appreciated what they did until
they were gone, and problems started to pile up. Not big problems, more